Japanese Cemetery Park

Entry is free and it is open through the day, laid out as a shaded memorial park rather than a working burial ground — the last interment was in 1973. Around 910 tombstones stand among frangipani trees, and the reason most people come is the history packed into them: the marker for Yamamoto Otokichi, reckoned the first Japanese resident of Singapore, the plots of the karayuki-san whose community founded the cemetery in 1891, and the grave of Field Marshal Terauchi, the wartime Southern Army commander.

There is no shop, no ticket desk and little in the way of signage, so it rewards a slow, unhurried read. It is a short ride from Serangoon Gardens, in the same northern cluster. The nearest MRT is Kovan on the North East Line, roughly a 15-minute walk through a quiet, largely unshaded landed estate — go in the morning, or take a bus along Yio Chu Kang Road and cut in, because no taxis wait outside and the residential streets give no cover in the midday heat.

The cemetery's origin is the thing most guidebooks skip: it was set up in 1891 by Japanese brothel keepers to bury the karayuki-san, the impoverished women sent overseas to work in Singapore's brothels, and their plain, closely set graves in the older section behind the prayer hall are the emotional centre of the site far more than the grander officers' memorials near the front.